A Cock, scratching for food for himself and his hens, found a precious stone and exclaimed: ”If your owner had found thee, and not I, he would have taken thee up, and have set thee in thy first estate. But I have found thee for no purpose, for I would rather have one barleycorn than all the jewels in the world.”

From Aesop’s Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, Collins Classics, London: Harper Press, 2011, p. 8.